Shitkid
The Moth Club, London
Friday 27th March 2026

Robyn Skinner heads to The Moth Club to review and photograph Swedish music duo Shitkids first show in six years. 

What a night to be at London’s Moth Club. The day before, the venue had received news that a building development that was planned adjacent to them, which would have put their future at risk, had been refused. A collective sigh of relief was heard across the grassroots community. The fight to save this iconic venue isn’t completely over, though, so do look out for ways you can support them. It’s also a great night to be at the Moth Club as it’s Shitkid’s first gig in six years. Otherwise known as Åsa Söderqvist, the Swedish lo-fi garage punk queen had seemingly disappeared and quit music, another act sadly swallowed up by the COVID pandemic, never to emerge again.

It’s been ten years since Söderqvist first started putting out music on Swedish label PNKSLM Recordings, and to celebrate, she has a string of gigs lined up and a compilation, The Essential (Vol 1), which came out recently. In the brief time she was putting out music under the Shitkid moniker, the first time round, she managed to release an impressively large body of two-and-a-half-minute fuzzy sing-along gems, and whilst doing so built a solid fanbase who are out in force tonight. In fact, tonight’s gig sold out so quickly that extra shows were added the previous two nights at The Shackelwell Arms and Rough Trade. We even encounter a group of friends that have come over from Florida just for this gig (and end up at all three nights instead of the one!).

Söderqvist is joined by collaborator Lina Molarin Ericsson on bass and Arvid Sjö on guitar. Promptly arriving on stage, they kick off with the deep, slow sludgy pace of Favorite Thing before taking it up a notch with 666 from her first EP, the crowd is immediately engaged and singing along. For those unfamiliar with Shitkids music, 666 and Oh Please Be A Cocky Cool Kid off the same EP are as great as any a starting point to understand the Söderqvist sound. Reminiscent at times of early Mary Chain, the rock and roll of The Cramps and the doo wop vocals and sing-along style of girl groups like the Ronettes, nothing ventures much past the three-minute mark, and it doesn’t need to – this is pop in its punkiest lo-fi form.

In a world where a cheap laptop and cracked software make it easier than ever to create polished music rather than the diy dirtiness of lo-fi garage, something is refreshing about hearing songs that sound like they were recorded in a bedroom with a microphone from Maplins, a keyboard from Tandy and a guitar from Argos. Its simplicity manages to translate well onto stage with the help of a few choice guitar pedals and a keyboard that has the drums pre-recorded onto it – or are they the preset patterns? – (I like to think it’s the latter!). There’s something incredibly fun and simplistic about how, between the three of them, they spend the gig going over to the keyboard to start and stop the drums for each song, whilst also adding drum fills and extra drum hits by smashing on the keys. The whole vibe is very much a bunch of friends hanging out; they look like they could quite easily have just emerged from a bedroom where they’d been recording jams on a tape recorder, ready to play back for us tonight. The energy works though, loose in places from not playing live in so long, they help each other out with song parts and riffs and importantly are clearly having a lot of fun with it.

Listening to Shitkid’s records, one could believe Söderqvist is a bit of a (pre-lime green) brat with her sleazy, nonchalant, almost sneery singing style and her lyrics of relationship woes and the kind of guys she really wants. In reality, her stage presence is incredibly joyful, endearing and carefree. She happily interacts with the crowd, joking that every song they shout out to request, the band haven’t practised and how sorry they are for not giving the crowd what they want. To be honest, the audience is more than happy with the relentless stream of favourites as we start to cover the grunge of Get Jealous, the subtle beauty of Dream Sequence and the outright anthemic punk of RomancE. Things are mixed up with the synth-focused PooBrain and the epic early 80’s post punk into Riot Girl of Dirty Guy. As the set goes on, the crowd progressively show their appreciation with an increasingly lively mosh pit and a chorus of vocals to every sing-along moment. Jumping in unison and chanting ‘ride with the boys’ during Alright and the ‘ba-ba-ba-da’s’ of Oh Me I’m Never. By this point, the whole audience is going wild, one of the girls from Florida is crowd surfing, and the bassist is on her knees shouting ‘ba-ba’s’ into a mic. They briefly go off and hide in the DJ booth before returning to the stage to finish with their most well-known song, the gloriously filthy Sugar Town. It goes down like a bag of sugar at a kid’s party, and before we know it, the gig is over and we’re all sweat-drenched but happy.

If that all sounds like a lot of fun to you, then you’re in luck, Shitkid will be back in the UK in autumn to play Glasgow, Manchester and London.

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You can keep up to date on Shitkid at her official website, Facebook, and Twitter.

Words and photos by Robyn Skinner – see her work here: Instagram